Broken Mirror
by MidKnight Rider
Summary: This is a re-imagining of how Jack and Sam may have finally gotten together. It exists outside the 'Verse I usually wirte that includes Sunshine and Shadow, Moonlight and Steel and Midnight and Dawn.
1. Chapter 1

_"A lost love is like a broken mirror. It is better to leave it broken than hurt yourself trying to fix it." - unknown_

She wasn't the kind of woman who needed explanations, or excuses for that matter. She had always understood what it meant to be military: the orders that had to be given, the danger that had to be met and faced. Yet here he was resorting to both – explanations and excuses – as the fire burned low and the last beer in the six pack disappeared. A thin crescent moon hung in a misty sky and the lake was a shimmering, inky black.

"You've been military long enough to know that there wasn't another team I could have sent in there," he declared, staring deliberately into the fire. "If I _had _sent another team you would have had a fit about it anyway."

He dared a glance at her. She said nothing. Fair hair shone almost white in the firelight. Her blue eyes were lost in shadow, nothing but black pockets in a shadow-clad face that lacked definition and expression. Her beauty was still evident. It tore at him.

"You would have said I was being overprotective, that I didn't trust you," he forged ahead anyway, "and I _did_ trust you. I _do _trust you. I –"

He broke off and sullenly finished the last swallow of beer. He gulped it down and savored the feeling of it in his throat as it blurred his senses. Remaining quiet he began picking off the sweating label around the neck of the bottle. The torn pieces joined the ones already littering the ground beside his lawn chair.

"I tried to find you. Long after everyone said to give up. I got into serious trouble as high up the chain of command as it goes trying to find you. Dammit, Sam! I got seriously _hurt _trying to find you."

She still didn't answer but her eyes were steady, looking straight at him from the hidden darkness. Jack muttered a curse and rubbed at his wounded left thigh. It was nearly healed but the damp of autumn was reminding him it had happened. Every twinge reminded him he had left Colorado Springs AMA. He'd only been half-healed but he'd left anyway.

He wanted her to speak, to accuse him, or even to forgive him. He just wanted her to say _something._ But she didn't. She just sat as if the chilling air didn't bother her.

"It's not my fault," he muttered, "Do you think I wanted to lose you like that? Do you think I wanted to lose you at _all?"_

He looked up at her again and said, "Dammit, Sam –"

And then he broke off because she wasn't there.

Behind him an owl gave a long mournful cry. Just like Jack, he was alone.

Jack let all the breath in his body out in one short rush and followed it with a long string of heartfelt curses. They were as violent as he could make them, a vain attempt to banish the black despair he had felt since Sam had died – a pain he had hoped never to feel again in this lifetime.

He tossed the empty bottle into the fire and stood, ignoring the protest from his wound. Then he poured sand onto it and kicked it apart until he was satisfied it was out. He wouldn't mind going out in a blaze of glory, but he wouldn't take the woods and the cabin with him.

That was no way to repay them for the blessed solitude they had given him.

Aching in heart and soul, he made his way back to the cabin and crawled, fully clothed, into a cold and lonely bed.

(0)

He had no idea what time it was when he dragged himself out of bed the next day. He didn't bother to look. Time had no meaning for him anymore. Very little had any meaning, come to that.

He ran the shower hot and stayed under it until he ran all the water out of the small tank. It didn't help.

He got dressed and wandered outside to sit on the dock and stare at the lake for a while.

Didn't help.

He had believed that he was royally screwed years ago, when he suddenly realized that he couldn't live without someone he couldn't have; at least, he couldn't have right away. They could wait. The war couldn't last forever, and it hadn't. Now he had to live without her forever.

Everything on PKX-9080 had gone to hell fast, and then Sam had disappeared in a series of ground explosions….

And now she was gone.

He stumbled into the kitchen and put on some coffee, then poured a bowl of corn flakes and splashed some milk on them. When he turned around, she was sitting at the table, gazing up at him with those intense blue eyes. He stared back for a moment, shrugged, and sat down across from her.

After a few mouthfuls of cereal he said, "I suppose it won't hurt, now to finally 'Talk About It.' I had conflicted feelings about having you on my team in the beginning. And yeah – you won't like this – it had a whole lot to do with you being a woman. Remember that mess with the Mongols? I don't care how you want to paint it, women always seem to be more at risk; and I wanted to protect you, even then. I know you don't need me to, but I wanted to."

He got up, poured coffee, came back to the table and she was still there, regarding him thoughtfully. He sat down, took a breath and ran straight into eight years of history. It choked him. Bottleneck. Dead stop.

"I could, uh, I could use a little help here. I can't have been the only one who was feeling anything then. Was I?"

Silence met his question but he thought he saw something soften in her eyes.

"You know I _couldn't_ feel that, right? If I...loved you, then I couldn't be your CO anymore. It was crazy to put you in harm's way to begin with, crazy to put any of you there. You're all way too valuable to the program to be in a field unit. I had to protect you. I had to keep a clear head. If I knew what you were like in bed…if I ever let my guard down and loved you the way I wanted…I'd never have let you go back out there again. I would have ordered you into a lab and it would've killed you."

He waited, held enchanted by her eyes on him, the quiet look she was giving him. He took a breath to steady himself and concentrated on his cereal and coffee.

When he looked up again she was gone.

(0)

He didn't see her again for a few days. Then one afternoon she was just there, sitting on the bank of the lake beside him. He had been skipping stones but he stopped to look at her closely for a while.

"Welcome back," he said softly.

She seemed to smile.

He pulled his knees up and leaned on them, gazing out at the lake.

"I was hot for you the first time I saw you. Tall, hot blonde in a uniform was pretty much guaranteed to spark my interest. But I've been suppressing shit like that for thirty years, especially about my fellow officers. Had _lots_ of experience. Falling in love with you was a whole different set of problems. At arm's length maybe, I could handle it. I've been a commanding officer for a long time. It was easy to put it in a place where it was manageable. I didn't know you felt the same way. Not at first. I'm dense like that. You, um, do feel the same way. Right?"

He risked a look at her. She was still there, still smiling at him in a slightly enigmatic way. He waited but she didn't speak. He threw a stone across the lake and watched it for a moment.

Seven skips. Not bad.

"So, look," he went on. "The bottom line was that I still had to be capable of taking care of you, of the whole team. I wouldn't deploy you any differently and I wouldn't grant you special favors. You'd chew my ass if I tried anyway. But I already loved you too much. Maybe that means we should have just gone for it. I'm too old to worry about crap like jealousy and fighting. We could have gone for it and still maintained the spirit of the frat regs." He flung a rock across the lake without attempting to skip it, just to watch it plunge. "But I was the only one I trusted with all of you. I couldn't afford to let myself get any more fucked up."

He looked at her again. "If I had asked, would you have said yes? I know. Romance," he said. "I bet you'd want romance. I can do that, you know. I'm an officer _and _a gentleman."

He turned to look at her again and she was gone.

"So glad we're finally having these little talks," he muttered sadly.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

He got used to her coming and going, in and out of his life, usually without warning either way. He mostly got used to being able to finally say all the things he should have said.

"You were pissed at me after Edora. You didn't say it, but I'd gotten frozen silence from you before. I guess it's safer than insubordination. You had this way of…saying things that I always knew meant you were pissed. But when you were really mad you just stopped talking. I knew you were mad. You worked our butt off to save me and I barely looked at you."

They were sitting on the couch in his tiny living room. There was a fire going and he had Wheel of Fortune on the big screen. The sound was muted because it was annoying and he didn't need it to solve the puzzles anyway.

"Do you know why I couldn't look at you? Because I couldn't have what I wanted. I couldn't do what I wanted. Because I wanted to take you and handle you. Touch you. I wanted to fucking _own_ you. Because I wanted you to want me, to welcome me touching you…and I couldn't have that, because I wanted you to ask me to make love to you and I couldn't have that, because I wanted you to make love to me and I couldn't have that, because I want to make you come so hard you'd cry…."

He broke off into a stunned silence and stared unseeing at the TV for a while.

"And we can't, we couldn't. We'd jeopardize our careers, and the program and the Earth and the galaxy and it would have broken up the team. It would have been a mess…."

He looked over at her. She was curled up in the corner of the couch with her elbow propped on the arm and her cheek resting on her fingers.

"And if you didn't want all of that too it would have broken my heart for the third time. I'm not sure I could take that. It's only held together with spit and glue anyway. The thing with Shanahan? I wasn't sure I was going to be able to take that. Why the fuck did you show me that ring? That knocked me for a loop you know. I didn't know what to say. Whatever I said probably didn't make any fucking sense. All I could think was that I was going to have to be there. I was going to have to sit there and watch you marry that little prick who almost got you killed. What the hell were you thinking? Okay. Wait, never mind. You called it off. I tried not to let that give me hope, but you did."

He didn't dare look away. He used the remote to turn off the TV. She was still there.

"I used to have – actually I guess I still have – this fantasy about you. Now, wait, I know what you're thinking but it's not like that. I'll admit there's no clothes but all I want to do is lay there with you, curled up together. I just wanted to hold you and sometimes if I imagined that I was - then I could sleep."

He was afraid to ask the next question. He didn't know how she would answer it.

"If I asked, if I begged, would stay here until I fall asleep? I know it's asking a lot but if you were here, I might sleep better."

He thought she might have smiled. Cautiously he scrunched up some pillows in the corner of the couch and slid down until his feet rested on the big trunk he used as a coffee table. He watched her watching him until his eyes grew heavy and he drifted off.

When he woke it was still dark but morning was teasing at the edges of the drapes. She was gone.

(0)

He was chopping wood the next time she showed up, sitting on top of the woodpile with her hands on her knees and her bright blue eyes looking like the winter sky.

"I only loved one other woman in my life, you know," he said and then got through splitting two logs before he straightened up, "I did a shit job of it too. She deserved better and so did you. I just never knew that I loved you. Scared the crap out of me.

"You want to know who knows? I mean – I know you do. You're curious about _everything._ I love you for that. I love you for about a thousand reasons but that's one of them.

"So you want to know? You'll like this. Daniel. He got on me once about it. He said he never knew me to let fear of failure stop me from doing something. Can you believe that? I mean, didn't he get it? It wasn't my failure I was worried about. I'd do anything not to hurt you. I didn't want my dying regret to be that I fucked up your life. For a smart guy he's kind of dense."

He stopped, split some more wood. Still she watched him. Tears stung his eyes and he got mad. Why cry now? For the loss? For all that had been unspoken?

"Sam," he began.

And looked up just as she faded away with the morning mist.

(0)

He had gotten used to it. He really had. He had come to crave it, the way she was still there for him. Almost like she had never left him.

He hadn't seen her in a day or two and was starting to watch for her. It should disturb him. He was probably losing his mind.

But it was kind of a nice way to go.

He finished his morning coffee, put his cereal bowl in the sink and went out onto the porch to get some more wood for the fire.

Sam was standing at his front steps, as if she was going to come up on the porch and knock on the door. She was wearing blue jeans and a heavy sweater in a deep midnight-blue color that made her look like a vision dreamt in moonlight.

Heartbreakingly lovely. He stared, throat dry, pulse pounding. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.

Then, incredibly, she took a step towards him. Her eyes bored into his from under heavy, sooty lashes.

Softly, unbelievably, she spoke.

"Hello, sir," she said. "It's me."


	3. Chapter 3

Jack eyed her warily. Then something deep inside him gave way, and he just shrugged. With his world crumbling around him he shouldn't be surprised when hallucinations began to talk.

"Well," he said, finally, "_that's_ new."

"Sir?"

"You don't usually talk," Jack observed.

Her eyebrows knitted together as a confused look shifted across her face. Then something seemed to occur to her and she nodded. "I guess not. You never did either. Of course we weren't _here..._um. We tried to call. It kept saying your voicemail was full."

For a long moment Jack looked at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Then comprehension dawned.

"Oh. Yeah. I haven't turned it on in a while." He turned to go in the house, thinking he might go call Daniel, you know, just in case he really had cracked up or this was actually happening. Then he looked back. "Will you stay? Right there?"

Sam folded her arms and shivered a little. "I'd like to come in. I'm…kind of cold. They beamed me straight here when we – Daniel and I – couldn't reach you. I was worried. But I didn't exactly pack anything."

He was still puzzled. She had never been cold before.

"Okay, yeah. Come on." He held the door and when she walked past him he could feel her presence. There was a scent that floated after her. It was just like the shampoo she used to use.

Sam walked into the living room and over to the fire, holding out her hands to warm them. Jack watched her for a little bit. She'd never done that either – just walked around like…normal.

It took him a while to find his cell phone. He finally found it in a drawer in the bedroom. He turned it on and hit Daniel on the speed dial. He kept one eye on Sam while it was connecting. It was answered before the first ring stopped.

"Daniel –" He broke off. It was possible he had forgotten how fast the doctor could talk when he was motivated. He had no choice but to listen, for a long time, commenting only when there was a brief pause for Daniel to take a breath. "SG3 huh?...Reynolds?...Yeah she's standing right here, I just wanted to…No, you don't need to come too…We'll be fine. Yeah…No…Goodbye, Daniel…No..._Goodbye, Daniel_."

He ended the call, shut off the phone and placed it on the mantle over the fireplace.

"Well?" Sam said.

"He says you're alive." His easy, laconic tone belied the frozen bullet of shock that had just hit him in the gut.

"Yep." She sounded remarkably calm and he wondered if she was feeling the same sense of unbalance that he was.

Jack wondered if there was a word for that moment when two people were so equally stunned to see each other that they could only stare, open-mouthed and silent.

"So," he said, if for no other reason than to break the moment, "I'm not crazy."

"No more than I am."

"Are you?"

"I don't think so."

They continued to stare at each other across the short distance.

"You hungry?" Jack asked, at last. "I think I have a frozen pizza."

Sam smiled a little. "I'm starving actually."

When she sat down at the kitchen table, Jack felt a moment of panic he couldn't quite express. But he'd had too many years of practice suppressing that reaction to give in to it now.

"Why did you come?" He asked, too afraid to let her to stop talking not to ask.

"I wanted you to know I was alive," Sam said, in her voice that had always implied the answer was pretty obvious, "and I wanted to see you."

Jack pondered that as he tossed the pizza in the small oven. 'Wanted to see you' was an understatement. They both knew it. The electric attraction between them never faded. It itched at them, constantly, and sooner or later they would have to do something about it.

"Okay," he said, slowly, "how are you alive? There were explosions. The building was leveled."

"I wasn't in the building. I was…captured, before that."

Jack looked away, considered it, looked back. "How many times did I tell you not to get caught by the bad guys? I thought we were clear on that."

"We were!" Sam said. "It wasn't my fault! I went in after Sandberg and he was already gone. When I tried to get back out…" She stopped, looked frustrated. Her hands had been in the air, waving for emphasis. Now they fell into her lap.

"What?" he demanded.

"I already told you all this. I already explained. Kind of."

"Already –" Jack started to ask and then stopped.

They were held in a frozen moment of mutual comprehension. Jack sighed in frustration. It seemed that he and Sam had been talking for months – just not to each other.

If this still wasn't just a very elaborate hallucination, that is. He had barely gotten used to the shock of a world without her. His nerves had barely stopped screaming and twitching.

"No, you didn't actually. Tell _me_ that is. So how about you do that now?" He hadn't meant to sound so sarcastic. It caused her too-fair skin to flush deeply and he felt a pang of regret.

"I was sold," she said, bluntly. Then she stumbled, looked down and then up at him with eyes so frank it took his breath away. "They have a treaty with another planet that includes trading slaves. I was knocked unconscious. When I came to I was light years away. I'm sorry. It was stupid."

_It's not possible for you to be stupid,_ Jack thought. He kept his gaze on her gentle and warm, maintaining eye contact. He didn't allow a hint of the boiling coldness in his gut to leak into his expression.

Jack also had to squelch an immediate and passionate need to shoot something. His first instinct was to demand who and where and how the hell did he get to the bastards. It was the first time he had any real hope that this was true, that Sam was here. Because never in his most depraved imaginings would he sell Sam into slavery.

He knew that Sam would downplay the hurt she had suffered. To keep him from overreacting she would take the blame and understate the harm.

He gave her the respect of not looking away. Whatever she was willing to tell him, he would listen. He tried not to look shocked or angry. He would just listen because he already knew all the shame and horror and sorrow and frustration she must have gone through, even if she would never tell him.

_I will find them and follow them into hell -_- The dark part of his mind couldn't let go of the rage. Like all of his deeper emotions, this one went unexpressed by his face or demeanor. It lived in the recesses of his soul, buried so that only he could reach it.

He didn't ask her to go on. He just sat down across from her and waited.

"I was...lucky, at that point, I guess. I caught the attention of someone from the government. He bought me and took me to live with him. He…was fair if harsh."

_Which won't stop me from finding him…_He ground his teeth and pushed the thoughts down again. He didn't want them to show on his face.

"I…He…" Sam stopped. Her expression turned inward, tortured. "I tried to escape but…like I said he was fair, even kind at times, but the rules were…strict. As long as he got what he wanted…But if he didn't, then he would punish someone else instead of the person who did something he didn't like."

"Scapegoats," Jack supplied.

"Yes," she admitted. "Mine was a girl named Sabra. She's about 12."

Jack stared. Then he leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs in front of him.

"Where is she?"

"At the SGC," Sam said. "I couldn't leave without her. SG3 was sent to my planet for a first contact. They saw me and didn't let on that they knew who I was. They requested me as a guide. Colonel Reynolds had a plan to just walk away, through the Stargate and it would have worked."

"Would have?"

"I refused to leave without Sabra. We went back to get her."

"Because your oh-so-kind master would have punished her if you ran away." Jack tried to keep the nastiness out of his tone, if not the sarcasm.

Sam winced but went on.

"I couldn't take the chance," she admitted.

Jack stared at the floor for a while, finally having the confidence to look away from her without fear that she was going to vanish.

"Who got you here? Daniel?"

There was no way the higher command would've let Sam just leave. She had been in the hands of a potential enemy, certainly under alien influence, for months.

"Yes," Sam said. "I don't know what strings he pulled. We were trying to reach you. I was confined to quarters and then the next thing I knew Daniel was telling me to dress warm. I barely got this sweater on and then I was here."

"Asgard beam?"

"Yes."

Jack nodded and stood up. "They did name a ship after him." He opened the oven door, pulled out the hot pizza and kicked the oven closed with his foot.

They didn't talk at all while he cut it into slices and opened two root beers. He wanted to be sober. The silence between them was a very fragile thing. Jack sensed there was more she needed to tell him. A lot more.

He didn't want to utter the wrong sound, the wrong phrase. He let her eat a little and finally she was the one who spoke.

"This is good," she said. "It's funny what you miss. Thank you." The words were stiff, almost formal.

Jack's eyes were soft, gentle. "What do you need?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Stay here," Jack urged. "Daniel said he would cover for you as long as you need."

Daniel had a lot of effortless power at the SGC that he hardly ever used. He had to be very motivated to use it. The guy on the phone had sounded very motivated.

"Then I need everything," she said, "Toothbrush, hairbrush, extra clothes..."

"In the spare bedroom," Jack said. He shrugged at her startled look. "I leave stuff just in case. It's all pretty generic. Finish your pizza."

"I need to talk," she blurted it out. 'I just…I'm not ready."

"Mmmm," he said easily, swallowing a bite first. "I know. Look, there's a hockey game on in a little bit. How about we move to the couch, stretch out, and take a breath?"

She nodded eagerly and he was glad. He hadn't wanted to sound like he was humoring her, or encouraging her not to tell him whatever she wanted. Her eyes had been so haunted, still that lovely clear blue but with a shadow lurking in the depths. Now she smiled and it was an obvious 'Sam-smile', almost shy, real and genuine.

"I'd like that," she said.

(0)


	4. Chapter 4

It didn't escape Jack's notice that Sam took the center of the couch. It left him with no choice but to sit beside her. First, though, he searched in the sofa cushions for the remote and then handed it to her.

"Doesn't have to be the game. Find whatever you like, whatever you missed."

Sam nodded and gave him a small, grateful smile.

While she flipped through the channels, he went to the fireplace and built up the fire high enough so that he wouldn't have to feed it for a while. Then he quickly cleaned up the kitchen and made a big mug of hot chocolate with a splash of whiskey in it.

He came back into the living room to find her listlessly scrolling through the channels, ignoring the science channel altogether. "Careful," he warned as he handed over the mug.

"Hot?" she asked.

"Well, yes, that too."

He didn't have to explain as she took a sip and immediately began coughing, tears stinging her eyes.

"Oh!" she choked. "Okay, then. Wow. Bit of a contradiction isn't it?"

He lifted both eyebrows.

"Chocolate is a stimulant. Whiskey is guaranteed to knock me out."

"It's the balance," he answered. "You have to get it just right."

Her eyes bored into his. "Yeah. I know."

Suddenly, fervently, he wished he didn't have to know what had happened to her out there. That he couldn't know, wasn't allowed to know, didn't have clearance. He couldn't imagine such a thing, but in that moment all he wanted was to be the guy she could just come home to and relax, let it go. He was afraid of her pain. He was afraid of her grief. But he had learned, the hard way, that he couldn't protect himself from pain without also losing out on happiness.

So he would bear those emotions with her because he loved her more than his own soul. He'd figured that out fast enough the first time she'd gone missing. Half of his resolve, half of what made him function he owed to Sam.

With something like terror – the kind he'd felt the first time he'd stood in a jump door looking out and down at twenty thousand feet of night before his first real mission – he sat down next to her, easing his feet up besides hers on the trunk, settling down carefully. She hadn't left him a whole lot of room on either side. They were touching from the knees down but she didn't move away. She had taken her shoes off and her socks rested against his boots. He let it go. It felt too damned good. It helped him remember the _feel_ of her in the air around him, the shape of her, her scent. The beloved presence he had thought he'd lost forever. He rested his arm across the back of the couch. His fingers itched to brush through her artfully tousled hair.

"Did you find something that you want to watch?" he asked, keeping his voice carefully calm and neutral.

"No," she handed him back the remote and wrapped both hands around the mug. "The game is fine. Just put that on."

Jack didn't argue with her. She looked one step from resting her head on his shoulder and surrendering to sleep. They watched the game in silence. It had been on for less than half an hour when Sam started to doze off. Putting the empty mug on the trunk, she fell over into the opposite corner and Jack watched as she scrunched a nearly flat throw pillow into something fluffier. She curled up tight, with her shins against his thigh and fell asleep.

Jack muted the sound because he didn't need it to follow the game and he wanted to listen to her soft, even breathing. He wanted to watch the flutter of her eyelashes just to make sure she was still here, _really_ here. She slept angelically. Quietly. She stretched at one point and he adjusted, putting her legs over his and rubbing her foot with gentle motions of his thumb and forefinger. Sam sighed with contentment and settled down again.

He glanced at the window and saw that it was dark and a light snow was falling, drifting past the window with a soft indifference to the tangled passions of the people inside the cabin.

Jack eased her feet off his lap and went to get his cell phone. He knew what time it was in Colorado Springs. He also knew that Daniel would answer.

"_Jack?_"

"Yeah," he answered and then, "Look, I need Reynolds' report on all this emailed to me. Immediately."

"_You haven't checked your computer lately have you?"_

Jack blinked. It took a moment to register. Daniel was way ahead of him.

"Okay," he said, finally. "Thanks."

"_You need anything else_?"

"No. If I do I'll let you know."

"_You_ _know where I am_."

"Yeah."

"_Is she okay?"_

"For the moment."

"_She tell you anything?"_

"Only why we couldn't find her and how SG3 stumbled upon her, and where she was in the meantime."

There was a brief silence but Jack could hear Daniel's jaw grinding.

"_Jack?"_

"Yeah?"

"_I know you're gonna want to kill the guy, but you can't_."

"Why not?" Jack asked, terse and annoyed.

"_Because Sam already did."_

Silence fell between them. It was heavy with shared frustration. This need to protect the people he loved was something that Daniel had learned from Jack. It was just hard to avenge a woman who could kill with precision and from a distance.

"Good," Jack said, finally.

"_Take care of her_."

"I will," Jack assured Daniel.

He clicked off the phone and set it back on the mantel. Then he stood leaning on it with the hockey game spinning to its conclusion in silence behind him. The emotional toll of the past few weeks was settling on him heavily. He had been dragging around Sam's death since the last sanctioned mission to find her had left him with nothing else to do.

Now her reappearance had given him a whole new set of problems and he wasn't quite over the shock of seeing her. He was trying to feel his way into what would help and not make it worse while dealing with the pain of knowing what Sam had surely endured. He felt helpless in the face of how strong she had been in the face of anguish and hardship so profound.

And he was suppressing it all because Sam really needed him not to be fucked up right now.

He sat down on the couch again, but when he lifted her feet she stirred, stretching both arms over her head, and yawned, blinked. Her eyes glanced around the room quickly, taking it in, assessing. Finally they settled on him and the frozen fear in them thawed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to –"

"Stop," he said, firmly but gently. "You can do whatever you need to do. Sleep, eat, rant, scream...whatever."

She looked uncertain. She was gazing into his eyes as if she wanted that to be true. Her breathing came out on a long, slow exhale, as if she had made a decision. Then she sat up, curled up in a loose ball and pressed up against him, forcing herself into his personal space, snuggling her head into the hollow under his shoulder. Automatically, Jack put his arm around her.

"This," she said, clenching her fist into his flannel shirt. "I need to do this."

"Okay," Jack said, seamlessly. _Don't freak out_, he thought. _No freaking out. _"You want the TV off? I haven't really been watching."

"No," she shook her head and her hair rustled against him. "It's fine. It's…it feels normal."

"Yeah," Jack said. He reached over with the other hand and stroked his fingers through her hair. His fingers ran across her eyebrow. His thumb stroked her cheek. It did feel normal, even though they had never done this. They had never sat and curled up together and just watched TV. He curled his fingers and ran his knuckles from her temple to her jaw.. When his hand fell it was to rest lightly over the one clutched to his shirt.

The game ended and Jack turned off the TV. They sat with the silent snow falling and building a tiny hill against the window pane.

"Sir," Sam began quietly.

"Jack," he interrupted.

She tilted her head enough to look up at him in question.

"Tonight it's Jack," he said. "Nothing official goin' on here. Understood?"

Sam nodded with profound gratitude. "I–" she paused, inhaled. "He forced me to – oh god…_Jack._ God–"

"Shhh," Jack said, tightening his hold. He had to work very hard not to lose it. Arm's length. Keep calm for her sake. For some reason he turned and pressed a kiss against her forehead. "Kinda figured. You don't have to tell me."

He realized she was crying. She wasn't making a sound. There was nothing but a slow bleed of tears from the corner of her eyes, a single drop at a time.

"Not often," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "He had a whole…harem, I guess, of exquisitely beautiful women and…not at first. I was there a long time before he – and he actually did spend some time seducing me. It wasn't…it wasn't horrible."

"Okay," he said, to soothe. He didn't want to humor her but he couldn't flip out on her either.

"I mean the…act itself. He never asked me to do anything horrible. I was pretty distanced from it anyway, not in a traumatized way. Disconnected, I guess."

There was a dark, dismal part of Jack that made it possible for him to do some of the things he had done in the service of his country. That part surged up into his gut, into his throat. A red mist formed in front of him.

Lethal menace towards a man already dead.

Another part of him whispered urgently. _Wait. Listen to her._

"He never hurt me," Sam went on.

Jack put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face towards him. She looked away and then bravely made eye contact.

"Sam," he said, doing his utmost to keep his voice gentle if not reassuring. Then he hesitated, blew out a sharp, reluctant breath and said, bluntly, "He used you against your will. He used the way you cared about a _child_ to force you to do what he wanted. I'm not sure what your definition of 'hurt' is but from my perspective, that's pretty much it. You survived because you're made of the toughest stuff there is. But I'm not going to let you make light of what happened, not to me and not to yourself."

"Is that to make me feel better? Is it better to have had no choice at all than to have a choice and make the wrong one?"

"I'm not sure you _can_ feel better about this. What happened _happened_. What I do know is that you got up, you survived, you _triumphed_ over something horrible."

"I told you! It wasn't horrible," she insisted.

More sharply than he intended and because he loved her, Jack said, "Yeah, Sam, it was."

He waited and watched a hundred expressions run across her beautiful face. She looked down at his hand, still flexed protectively over hers while hers was still fisted in his shirt. She relaxed her hand, forced it to open and then turned it palm up into his.

"Yeah," she admitted finally. "I guess it was."

"You can't just rough this off."

"That's what you do," she countered.

"Not anymore, and I won't let you start."

"I don't want a shrink."

"You don't need one. You have me. You have your team. That's why we're here."

Sam gave him back a single long steady gaze. "Do I have you?"

"Always. I told you that when your father died."

"_Really_ have you?"

Jack's heart faltered, skipped. All those long conversations they'd had and never had. There were now no words at all for the power of his love, his pride, his rage, admiration and heartache.

"_Sam._" When he said her name it was low in his chest, almost a growl, earthy and possessive. "_Yes_. Don't you know? I _belong_ to you."

(0)


	5. Chapter 5

Jack leaned forward, brought his face close to Sam's, almost touching, enough to maintain eye contact, holding her gaze with the force of his own. What he said next took her breath away, renewed the sting of tears in her eyes and had her reaching to put her arms up around his neck.

"Yes," he continued, "and if you have ever belonged to anyone ever – _ever_ – that person is _me_."

It had been a guess at what she needed to hear. But like all Jack's guesses it had been based on instinct and training, and in this case on the long relationship they'd had. It had still been a bit of a shot in the dark and it could have backfired on him in a spectacular way.

But it worked. This time he was right. What had Sam really shaken was that she hadn't belonged to _herself_ for all those weeks and wasn't sure that she could ever go back to the way things had been. Maybe she was afraid she couldn't get back now to whatever she'd hoped could be.

"Yes. Yes," Sam breathed, clinging to him. Her voice shook in the way it did when she had been hanging by a thread and then found herself suddenly, shockingly safe. She sounded as if she desperately needed to believe that was true, as if she were _dying_ for it to be true. For about three seconds Jack resisted doing more than keeping his arms around her loosely, returning the embrace in a strictly friendly way. Then he let out a low groan that sounded like _oh god_ and tightened all the muscles in his arms. The message, he hoped, was clear – _you're safe with me, you can go whenever you want, but please don't go._

In the way her body fit into his and the way she leaned her entire weight on him, Jack could feel everything she hadn't said – the deep lingering physical fear in every sinew and tissue of her. The longer she held him the more it seemed to ebb. It flowed into Jack like electricity and he absorbed it, grounding it.

"It hurts," Sam murmured, muffled against his chest.

"What does?" he asked anxiously.

"Everything." Her response was flat, miserable.

Jack stroked her hair. "This hurts? Touching?"

"No, no," she said. "That feels good." She looked up again. "Take me to bed."

Jack inhaled so sharply it made his chest ache. He let it out slowly before speaking.

"Look, Sam, I can't believe I'm about to say this after eight years of sexless foreplay, but the answer – at least for tonight – is no."

She looked startled, then frowned, elegant brows drawing together.

"You don't want…?" she trailed off.

He remained silent for a long time. He'd already told her all this – how much he wanted her, wanted to take her, handle her, touch her. He'd already told her how they couldn't, how he couldn't.

Except that he hadn't. Not really.

"Oh yes, I do want," he said with a shaky laugh. "You have no idea what you do to me. You're gorgeous. Dammit, you're _hot_ and I love your body but only because _you're in it._ I've waited too long to do this wrong, to do this now, when you're feeling like this." As he spoke he ran his hands over her – shoulders, face, hair, slowly down her back. He wasn't trying to arouse. He was just trying to reassure both of them.

"Okay, listen. Let's just go get into bed." Jack hated how hopeful that sounded. "Believe it or not that's all I ever really wanted. You in bed with me, yours or mine, didn't matter. Just next to me, as close as you're willing to be. We'd get really close to that sometimes off-world when we shared a tent, but it didn't help; just made me want it more. But I'm not taking this any further right now. We've waited this long. We're not doing this when you're so…vulnerable. You're being unbelievably calm and rational right now. But I know what this is doing to you and I'm _not_ getting the way we feel about each other all mixed up with that."

Sam was staring at him. It might be the longest thing she had ever heard him say on the matter. There was a kind of gentle smile in her eyes that was Sam-like again.

"That's very…straightforward of you," she said, finally.

"Didn't think I had it in me, did you?" He tried a sloppy grin and was rewarded by a twitching of her lips in return.

"You write a very succinct mission report. So, yeah, I did."

"So," Jack said, suddenly scared all over again, "Bed then? It's late. Together, I mean. There's still a guest room if you –"

He stopped when she started to shake her head vehemently.

"Not alone," she said, "Not tonight. Maybe not ever."

He let her go into the guest room to rummage around in the drawers and closet to find whatever she wanted to sleep in. She came out in a faded purple sweat shirt with the Minnesota Vikings logo on the front. It had stopped fitting Jack years ago but it was long on her arms and loose through her shoulders and went to the top of her legs – which were bare.

Ever mindful of what she had just been through, Jack swallowed the rush of desire and went back to damping the fire for the night. The metaphor was not lost on him.

She used the bathroom first and was waiting in bed for him when he was finally down to a tank shirt and sweatpants. He turned out the light and waited by the side of the bed until his eyes adjusted to the snowy gray light coming in the window.

"You want to change your mind now is the time. I can take the guest room."

In answer Sam shifted over to make more room. He got under the sheets and the blanket and the heavy faded quilt that had been in his family longer than he had. For a moment he didn't move, didn't dare breathe. Then she moved closer, hesitated. Reached for him. She rolled onto her side and pressed up against him. Her head found a natural place as his arm went around her. He reached over, ran his hand gently over Sam's brow, fingers threading through her hair, palm smoothing down the side of her face.

"This okay?" he asked, anxiously.

"Oh god, yes," she murmured, half gone already. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Jack didn't answer at first. Then, "There's something else. Something else I meant to say."

"Tell me in the morning," she said, "It will be safer in the morning."

Jack tried to tell her anyway. He turned, pulled her closer and bent to brush his lips over hers.

Sam sighed and he thought maybe she tried to kiss back. He felt the moment she went to sleep again and knew he was hovering on the edge himself. But he was fighting it because he finally had what he had wanted year after long year and he didn't want to sleep and miss any of it.

He woke up on his back, one arm still reaching for Sam. She was still sleeping quietly next to him, though she had moved away a little. They weren't touching anymore but she was facing him. Her lashes were a dark crescent smudge on her pale cheeks. Relief spilled through him like liquid. He'd been that sure that no matter what Daniel had said, Jack was going to wake up and find out the entire previous day had been some kind of walking hallucination.

"Sam," he said, quietly.

Her eyes fluttered open, blinked and then focused.

"Good morning," she said.

Jack opened his mouth to speak and couldn't. There had been a surge of words too sudden and immediate to voice. Instead he moved closer and put his forehead against hers. He swallowed a few times and started over.

"That thing I said I wanted to say last night? You told me to wait until morning?"

She nodded.

"I love you," he said, "with everything I've got. It's all yours."

After a frozen second in which Jack's heart failed to beat, Sam finally put her arms around him and squeezed tight. It changed the whole feel of her. Jack could feel the surge of relief melting her.

"I love you too," Sam whispered, low and easy, the way it was said between people who had been together and known it for years.

There was a lot they would probably say to each other in the years that were going to follow this. But none of it needed to be said now.

What Sam had gone through wasn't over and it was a long way from fixed. Jack suspected that he was in for months of desperate late-night out-of-the-blue phone calls that he would answer every time. There would be times in the middle of relaxed team nights at his place when Sam would go suddenly still because something would trigger a memory. Jack vowed never to be impatient with that, never once to say or indicate, 'not _that_ again' or 'you should be over this by now'. No matter how bad the timing or what else he was doing, no matter how repetitive her freakouts might be, Jack would always be there for her, to touch, to soothe, to reassure; whether she was on the other end of the phone, the passenger seat of the car or the other side of the table or the other half of the bed. He was the guy who knew the whole story and would understand without making her explain all over again. He was the one who would get it just by the look in her eyes. Jack would be the one who listened in silence when it hurt her too much to speak. The day when none of this had any power over Sam was a long way off, but right now, for this astonishing moment, she seemed at peace, content. He didn't sense even the barest shadow around the edges.

He closed his eyes, snuggled down and felt her sigh and do the same. He was starting to believe this happily-ever-after thing might be possible.

After all, it couldn't be less possible than the other hundreds of impossible things they had managed to do over the last eight years.

There was time now. Time to heal. Time, even, for happiness.

` _FINIS_ `


End file.
